The question that haunts Marilynne Robinson’s work—can people change?—is one to be asked of societies as much as of individuals. It is a theological question too. Like the great American writers she is so steeped in—Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, Twain—there is a profound issue of freedom at the core of her novels. Can we change our lives?
Source : Sympathy for the Devil
